Easy Street Pizza Goes Green: Park Ridge Restaurant Launches Composting Program to Transform Food Waste into Soil

​Partnership with The Urban Canopy and Go Green Park Ridge Diverts Food Scraps from Landfill.
​
PARK RIDGE, IL – June 2026 –

Easy Street Pizza, a beloved neighborhood restaurant in Park Ridge, is taking decisive action against food waste by launching an innovative composting program in partnership with The Urban Canopy and Go Green Park Ridge. The pilot initiative diverts the restaurant’s food waste stream—including patrons’ leftovers and kitchen scraps—away from landfills and back into enriched soil that will nourish communities and landscapes throughout Illinois. This commitment reflects Easy Street Pizza’s recognition that environmental stewardship and neighborhood sustainability are essential values for businesses today.

The composting program represents a meaningful shift in how restaurants can operate responsibly. Rather than sending valuable organic materials to landfills where they decompose anaerobically and release methane—a potent greenhouse gas—Easy Street Pizza’s food scraps are now composted aerobically, capturing and sequestering carbon while creating nutrient-dense compost. This simple shift delivers outsized environmental benefits while addressing critical local needs.

Composting Delivers Real Environmental Wins

Composting offers multiple climate and conservation benefits that address urgent environmental challenges:

Water Conservation: Compost acts as a natural water retention system in soil, improving its ability to hold moisture and reducing the need for supplemental irrigation by up to 25%. As water scarcity becomes an increasingly pressing concern, this water-holding capacity is vital for sustainable agriculture and landscaping.

Carbon Sequestration: Composting aerobic organic material prevents methane emissions and stores carbon in the resulting humus, which can remain stable in soil for decades. A single restaurant’s composting efforts may offset multiple tons of CO₂ equivalent annually.

Soil Fortification: Compost restores essential nutrients and microbial diversity to depleted soils, strengthening their structure and productivity. This is especially critical in an era of fertilizer supply chain disruptions and rising input costs, making locally produced compost an invaluable resource for food security and agricultural resilience.

The timing of Easy Street Pizza’s initiative could not be more important. Recent global fertilizer shortages and price volatility have underscored the fragility of conventional agricultural supply chains. By returning organic matter to local soil through composting, Park Ridge is building resilience and reducing dependence on imported synthetic inputs—strengthening both food security and environmental health.

A Collaborative Community Effort

Go Green Park Ridge, the community-driven sustainability initiative, worked to design and implement this pilot program with Easy Street Pizza and The Urban Canopy. By bringing together a restaurant, a business focused on urban composting, and a grassroots community group, the partnership demonstrates how local collaboration can drive meaningful environmental progress at the neighborhood level.

“Go Green Park Ridge is excited to partner with The Urban Canopy and Easy Street Pizza & Beer Garden on the city’s inaugural commercial composting pilot program,” says Andrew Dordek, Go Green Park Ridge member and compost advocate. “Owner/operator Nick McGeary immediately embraced this waste diversion initiative that turns food scraps into a beneficial soil amendment. As we collect and assess data, we look forward to helping influence more commercial composting projects within our community—where a dedicated organics waste stream becomes the norm, not the exception, for food and beverage businesses.”

Supporting Restaurants That Support the Earth

Easy Street Pizza’s composting commitment is an invitation to patrons to be part of the solution. When diners choose restaurants that prioritize composting and waste reduction, they directly support businesses that are reducing their environmental footprint and strengthening local soil health. In a time of climate uncertainty and resource constraints, these choices matter.

Food waste is a global crisis—approximately one-third of food produced worldwide is wasted, along with all the water, land, and resources embedded in its production. At the restaurant level, Easy Street Pizza’s composting program tackles this challenge head-on, preventing valuable nutrients from being lost and instead returning them to the earth where they belong.

“We are thrilled to partner with Go Green Park Ridge and Easy Street Pizza & Beer Garden,” says Adam Schwartz, Compost Club Coordinator at The Urban Canopy. “In just the first week, we collected 100 lbs of compostable material from Easy Street—equivalent to preventing 260 lbs of CO₂ emissions. At this rate, Easy Street will reduce their climate impact by the same amount as growing 101 tree seedlings for 10 years. By choosing restaurants that take composting seriously, customers become partners in building a more sustainable food system.”

About Easy Street Pizza
Easy Street Pizza is a Park Ridge institution known for quality ingredients, community engagement, and neighborhood pride. The restaurant’s commitment to composting reflects its belief that businesses have a responsibility to operate in ways that benefit the environment and strengthen the communities they serve.

About The Urban Canopy
The Urban Canopy partners with communities and organizations to scale composting programs that divert organic waste from landfills and create local soil amendments. Through innovative collection and processing, The Urban Canopy helps neighborhoods build circular systems that benefit both the environment and local gardens, farms, and landscaping projects.

About Go Green Park Ridge
Go Green Park Ridge is a community-led initiative dedicated to advancing sustainability practices at the neighborhood level. The organization works to reduce waste, promote conservation, and build partnerships between residents, businesses, and local organizations that share a commitment to environmental stewardship and climate action.

Media Contact
Jen Panattoni
Good Stuff Marketing Co.
[email protected]
For interviews, questions, or additional information about the Easy Street Pizza composting program, please contact Jen Panattoni.
###

easy_street_press_release_final.pdf
File Size:	100 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

---